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Bechamel Sauce
1 pint (2 cups) milk I small carrot I celery stalk I small onion 2 tablespoonfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls butter I bay leaf 12 whole peppers 1 gill (1/2 cup) cream Salt and pepper Wash and prepare the vegetables, then slice them.
Put them into an earthenware dish with the milk, whole peppers, and bay leaf, and let them cook in it until it is well flavored. Melt the butter in another pan, stir in the flour smoothly, then strain in the milk, and stir it over the fire till it boils; then let it simmer for ten minutes. Next strain it, return it to the pan, reheat it, season it to taste, and, lastly, add the cream, taking care that it does not again reach boiling point.
A classic infused white sauce, written when "casserole" meant the earthenware pot on the stove rather than a baked dish. The whole method hinges on flavouring the milk before it ever meets the roux.
- UnitsA gill is half a cup, as the recipe helpfully notes. "12 whole peppers" means twelve whole black peppercorns, not chillies.
- The earthenware dishThis is a stovetop step, not an oven one. Use any heavy saucepan; earthenware was prized for holding gentle, even heat and not scorching milk.
- Infusing the milkNo time is given for "until it is well flavored"; roughly 20 minutes at a bare simmer will do it, or bring the milk just to steaming and let it stand covered off the heat for 20-30 minutes. Milk left at a hard boil with vegetables in it will catch on the bottom and taste scalded.
- RouxTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to two cups of milk gives a medium sauce, coating a spoon lightly. Cook the flour and butter together a minute or two before adding liquid so the raw-flour taste cooks out, but keep it pale.
- Strained milk, warmStraining the hot infused milk into the roux is the point of the sequence: warm liquid into hot roux, added gradually, keeps it smooth. Reserve the vegetables for something else or discard them.
- The second strainingAfter the ten-minute simmer the sauce is strained again to catch any lumps or stray peppercorn. A fine sieve does more for the texture here than whisking will.
- The creamAdd it off direct heat. Once cream goes in, boiling will thin the sauce and can make it look broken or grainy; reheat only to serving temperature.
- YieldAbout 2 to 2 1/2 cups, depending on how much reduces during the simmer; enough to sauce a dish for six, or to bind a gratin of vegetables, fish or poultry.
Béchamel is named for Louis de Béchamel in Louis XIV's household, though the attribution is traditional and cooks were thickening milk with flour and butter long before he had a sauce named after him. What distinguishes it from a plain white sauce is exactly what this recipe insists on: the milk is first steeped with aromatics — onion, carrot, celery, bay, peppercorns — so that the finished sauce carries flavour of its own rather than serving as neutral paste. Earthenware holds heat gently enough to infuse milk without catching, and a good white sauce is what turns leftover fish or fowl into a dish worth bringing to table.